


your bad self

by storytellingape



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Your Bad Self - Papercut (Short Film 2010)
Genre: Anal Sex, Coming of Age, Denial of Feelings, Friends With Benefits, Hemophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Meet the Family, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, Phillip Being an Asshole, Roughness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-08 19:42:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15250629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: Phillip Altman grows up, falls in love, and learns that the hardest lesson of all is trying to be good.





	your bad self

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chifuyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chifuyu/gifts).



> Inspired by and written for my best pal [StaticRaining](https://twitter.com/StaticRaining). There's lots of sex, a reference to Nick Hornby, and I still don't know what I'm doing with my life writing rare and obscure adjacent ships. I hope you enjoy! You don't have to have seen This Is Where I Leave You but it will help understand the latter half of the story as it references the movie a lot. [Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOZZaVTeVY) a nice little compilation of all of Adam's scenes from the movie. Gareth is from a Your Bad Self skit called [Papercut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hrBcnaJEkc) on Youtube. Warnings for blood, and a lot of it.
> 
> Feel free to yell at or with me @[softgingertwink](https://twitter.com/softgingertwink) on twitter!
> 
>  **EDIT: 07/16/2018** [NOW WITH GORGEOUS ART FROM myop1470](https://twitter.com/myop1470/status/1018847542438551553)!

 

* * *

 

 

*

 

There are two truths Phillip knows about himself: one is that he loves a good time, another is that he hates complications. He isn’t some sort of animal but when the itch is strong and the self-loathing stronger he hits the best clubs in the city and looks for ways to entertain himself. 

Sometimes that means drowning in tequila, or following a stranger to their little drug den to score some premium weed. He lives the life of a hedonist, or at least that’s what his mother would tell him if she knew what he got up to with the money she lent him that was supposed to be the capital for a start-up business. 

But Phillip likes to think of it this way: that he _is_ the business, the investment, the product. The money goes to self-improvement anyway: a fast car, a nice studio apartment in a nice part of town near enough to the nucleus of the business district where he can get an actual job, trendy clothes. Appearance is important; he is a walking, talking advertisement of himself and he’ll use his body to his advantage. 

But Phillip’s greatest asset, irrefutably, is his mouth: he can talk to anyone _anywhere_ at any time at all; charm them, cajole them, make them do his bidding, or punch him in the face and spit at him. The results are varied, and the bad outcomes are mostly his fault anyway, a consequence of his inability to keep a lid on it. 

If slanging weed and prescription pills in high school had taught Phillip anything it’s that no one’s going to buy the crap you’re peddling if you don’t know how to at least talk shop. The important thing is to get the word out to the right ears and the money will follow. So he talks, he talks a lot. To the right people in the right places at the right time. 

He still sells weed on the side from time to time, but not the shitty kind in back alleys and dark rooms and the faculty parking lot after dark. He sells the high-end kind, the Rolls-Royce of weed, to the people who can actually afford to own a Rolls-Royce: athletes, successful professionals, up-and-coming artists. His therapist, once, though she drives a Honda, an exemption to the rule because she writes him a prescription every time he asks. 

He’s good at it, so good in fact that he quits his desk job to sell weed full time. He buys a faster car, gets a bigger apartment. He quits therapy and builds a network. 

Here’s another truth Phillip knows about himself that he can’t pinpoint the origin of: he loves redheads. Anyone he’s ever dated or fucked had been a redhead in some capacity with the exception of Jenny Miller who’d been a bottle blonde. Her stepmom was a redhead though. That was something. But the point still stands: nothing is more attractive to him than a natural redhead. Call it what you want, a kink, a fetish. He’ll only fuck a person if the drapes match the carpet.

Phillip met Gareth in a gay club downtown. The outlier if there ever was one: sipping a fruity drink with a bendable straw and paper umbrella — wearing pleated trousers straight from the office. He even forgot to take his lanyard off, what a dick, but he had the most beautiful red hair Phillip had ever seen. Long, to the shoulders, in soft waves like in the stories his mother would often read him to as a kid. _And she had long beautiful hair and was the envy of all the land_. 

Phillip didn’t even have to try very hard. He approached, flashed a smile, and Gareth was weak-kneed for him instantly, swaying into his orbit. He had an accent, always cute, though he was painfully shy which almost wasn’t. 

Phillip’s met his kind before: soft, probably closeted, hating their job, their life, burnt out by everything. He took Gareth home and fucked him twice. The first time Gareth came immediately, all over Phillip’s expensive blue sheets, and he was so embarrassed about it that it almost took the fun out of the moment. 

The second time was beautiful: Gareth’s long legs pushed up to his skinny chest, his red hair tossed wildly across the pillows like a shipwreck. He made the most wonderful noises and it was clear he’d never been fucked like Phillip had fucked him before, hard and dirty, stopping for nothing, sweat and heat and the body electric. He even thanked Phillip when they were done, slumped on one side of the bed, his hole gaping.

Phillip patted him on the hip before kicking him out though he had the good grace to call Gareth a cab home. And that was that, end of story. They were never supposed to see each other again. Except.

*

Phillip doesn’t sleep with the same people twice, not if he can help it. He likes variety; keeping his options open offers a myriad of new experiences. It’s why he can never work a 9 to 5 job; the monotony alone will kill him. It’s not the kind of life he’s suited for, settling down when the sea is wide and abundant. 

The third time he sees Gareth in the same club on a Friday night like all others, he snatches him up before another guy takes him home, seized by an unshakeable impulse, the same one that compels him to push Gareth up against the door of his apartment and press a knee between his legs. Another thing about Phillip: when he sees something he likes, he’ll sink his hands into it, never mind ruining it for others. As a kid and the youngest of four, his parents spoiled him to death. He was never taught to share. And now as an adult he simply never learned. 

Now Gareth, he’s just as pretty as the first time, startling when Phillip kisses him, panicky like a caught bird. Phillip imagines that Gareth must have grown up ugly, awkward and gangly and probably just a bit unpopular in school for him to react like this when Phillip corners him, shocked into stillness by Phillip’s blazing lust for him. 

“You let anyone fuck you in the last three weeks?” Phillip asks, breathing the question down Gareth’s ear as he lets his fingers work through all the buttons of Gareth’s dress shirt. Underneath Phillip’s hand, Gareth’s chest is shaking, his breath tremulous as he arches into the touch. 

“W-what,” says Gareth, his expression contorting. “Why would I— no, no I haven’t. It’s just been you.”

“Good,” Phillip grins, though he’d already expected the answer. “Good boy.”

Gareth smiles uncertainly, and then Phillip peels his shirt completely off. He’s thin, of course, pale from working a desk job, but soft in the right places that gets Phillip’s blood pumping. His nipples are pale pink points, small, delicate, his wrists the same, breakable.

When he’s completely naked, Phillip makes him get on his knees. He can see that Gareth is already hard, starting to pearl copiously at the slit. Gareth likes this, being the only naked one and told what to do. Phillip doesn’t even have to play nice; he knows Gareth will do whatever he says.  

Phillip takes his dick out and rubs the wet head against Gareth’s soft cheek, smearing himself all over Gareth’s face, his lips.

“Come on, suck it,” Phillip hisses, grabbing a handful of his hair as Gareth makes a soft noise in his throat, a little kitten mewl. He loves it, always a slut for being told what to do, how to do it. “Put it in your mouth. If you do a good job, I’ll give you what you want.” Which is, pretty much anything, in Gareth’s case. Phillip can probably make him come without touching him. It doesn’t take a lot to get him excited. 

Gareth hesitates only a moment before nuzzling Phillip’s thigh. Then he’s putting his tongue on the base of Phillip’s dick, and Phillip leans back and groans and grips his hair harder. He tugs gently, then not so gently anymore when Gareth takes him fully into his mouth. He’d gagged that first time, Phillip remembers, had almost choked, but he isn’t anymore, agile now in the art of sucking a big cock, bobbing his head in a rhythm that makes Phillip’s breath sputter.

“Easy,” Phillip says, gritting his teeth, fucking Gareth’s mouth sweet and slow like he’ll do with his ass later. “Take it easy. Relax your throat. There you go, baby.” He comes shuddering all the way down to his feet, pulling out to cover Gareth’s face in his come as the throbs of pleasure recede. There’s ropes of it in Gareth’s hair, the spikes of his eyelashes, across the bridge of his nose. He’s a mess and Phillip kisses him greedily until they’re both covered in it, Gareth grinding against him, shameless, wanting to be taken to bed. 

Phillip lays him down on all fours and spreads his tiny ass open with his hands, licking into him, sloppy and hungry. Gareth is panting, rutting against the sheets but Phillip won’t let him, yanking him back so he can sink his teeth into the meat of Gareth’s ass hard enough that he leaves an imprint that will mottle into a bruise when enough time has passed. He kisses Gareth right there where he’s tight and trembling, needing it badly, not a kiss you give on a first date that’s for sure, but a French fucking kiss that’s full of tongue, full of spit, that has Gareth crying out helplessly and fisting the bedding while his cock drips, painfully untouched.

“What do you want,” Phillip  asks, but he doesn’t really care, if Gareth wants his dick, his mouth, his fingers, or a combination of all three, it doesn’t really matter. He’ll get each at some point in the night anyway, and he’ll thank Phillip for knowing his body better than he does, how to make it throb like a hot muscle pumping blood, and then how to reel it back like a kite caught in a power line, riding the wild ebbs and flows of his pleasure. 

Phillip pushes two lube-slick fingers into Gareth’s waiting hole, and pumps his dick with his other hand. Up and down, and out and in, again and again, over and over. Gareth comes, biting his lip, long hair curtaining his neck, his back a smooth pale curve wavering with tiny tremors. 

Phillip flops down next to him and watches as Gareth unspools himself, first the shoulders straightening, then the rest of him, as he peeks shyly over his shoulder and says meekly, “Sorry I made a mess of your sheets again.”

As if Phillip cares about things like that. “Don’t worry about it,” Phillip tells him. “I’ll send you the bill for the dry cleaning.” He’s only joking of course but Gareth stares at him in shock nonetheless. 

*

Phillip moves in small circles. He knows anybody who’s anybody, is the friend of a friend of your next door neighbor, always the familiar face. He vacillates between clubs within walking distance of Logan Circle though recently he’s graduated to more subdued bars down town where the pour is generous and college students don’t always make up a good bulk of the crowd. 

It’s really no surprise then, that he bumps into Gareth during one of these excursions just as Gareth is exiting the washroom and Phillip is finishing up with a client. Part of the reason Phillip prefers these bars is because there is no shortage of people willing to pay good money for hard drugs and weed, and business is always thriving when your target demographic _ain’t_ broke. Not that he has anything against college kids; they just simply don’t bring in the money.

Gareth meets Phillip’s gaze with some measure of recognition when their eyes lock briefly. Phillip nods at him, noticing again that he’d come here in the same clothes he might have worn to the office this morning. The lavender dress shirt is one size too big, the tail sticking out at the back. But Phillip has seen him naked before so this fact is easily negligible especially when he knows what’s hidden underneath.

“I was just leaving,” Phillip says to him, ducking his head so Gareth can hear him over the din. 

“What?” Gareth says, voice muffled by the noise. He plugs a finger into one ear. “ _What?_ ”

“I said I was just leaving!” Phillip repeats.

Gareth nods at him. His eyes look sober enough though his breath is sharp with a tinge of alcohol. His cheeks are shiny with a thin film of sweat. “Okay,” he says, and Phillip pushes himself off the wall to squeeze through the roaring crowd. He glances back when he senses Gareth not following behind him. Gareth hasn’t budged an inch and is bobbing his head to the music, not particularly bothered by the fact that this makes him look like a complete idiot. 

“Are you coming or what?” Phillip says, annoyance starting to creep into his voice, overlaid by impatience. He’s a busy man. 

Gareth puts his drink down on the bar, wiping the corners of his lips with a paper napkin. “Oh, you mean me?” He glances around before pointing at himself. Of course Phillip means him, who else did Gareth think he means? They were just talking. “I didn’t know that was an invitation.” 

Phillip stops himself from saying something obvious but surely Gareth isn’t that obtuse. 

“Oh!” Gareth starts patting his hair self-consciously. “Oh, right. Okay. Would it be all right if I finish my drink first?” 

That isn’t the only favor. Later he says he wants to stop at an ATM. The last time Phillip had called him a cab, he said, the fare had cost him an arm and a leg and he had to run to his apartment for spare change while the cabbie kept the meter running. He wanted to be prepared.

“Only if it’s all right with you of course,” Gareth clarifies when Phillip is backing out of the parking lot. “Please,” he adds meaningfully. Phillip grunts. As if he can say no to such a bizarre request. The sooner they get it over with the better so he allows this minor inconvenience even if it means taking an unexpected detour. 

It takes Gareth a full ten minutes and then he’s sliding back into the passenger seat, fumbling with his seatbelt which he can’t seem to figure out. He smiles shyly when he catches Phillip studying him. He’s an interesting specimen, strange. Phillip shouldn’t be as attracted to him as he is; look at him, he’s a fucking joke. The why of it is a complete mystery and leaves Phillip still puzzling over it when they fall into step together in the elevator, not looking at each other. Gareth is shifty, nervous, same as usual. He asks if he could use Phillip’s shower first.

“My shower.”

Phillip’s hands curl into fists before he relaxes them. A couple more hours, he thinks to himself, then Gareth will be gone, and it’ll be over. Phillip loves a good time, true, but sex shouldn’t be this complicated. He has half the mind to kick Gareth’s ass to the curb but he’s already here and Phillip hates wasting effort, time. He’s also half-hard in his pants. 

“It’s the first door to your left,” he bites out. “There are spare towels in there so knock yourself out.” 

Then Phillip waits for him in the bedroom, first sprawled deliberately on the bed with his legs akimbo before he decides to unbutton his pants halfway. He flops down on the covers and fiddles with his phone, his legs jiggling restlessly. He looks up when he hears the door creak open and rolls his eyes and drops his arms to the sides. “Fucking finally,” he groans, then his heart stops beating. 

There he is, completely naked in the doorway like some fucking wet dream. _Gareth_. Phillip’s mouth is dry as a desert. This, he thinks, this is why he puts up with the annoyances. Gareth doesn’t know how gorgeous he looks completely naked, that he presses all of Phillip’s buttons down to the cellular level. If Phillip had a check list of physical attributes he finds attractive in a person, Gareth will have had ticked them all and then some so it’s rather unfortunate that his personality is an acquired taste. Phillip swallows then swallows again at the wave of arousal sweeping his thoughts. He licks his lips and can’t seem to find his voice.

“Come here,” Phillip finally manages to stutter, patting his lap and then widening his stance. He’s fully hard now, straining the front of his pants, his breath picking up as Gareth kneels between his spread legs. Phillip likes him like this best, when he’s not talking, when he’s naked and hard for him and shivering under his skin, every action deliberate to incite a reaction out of Phillip. Or maybe Phillip is just projecting. Gareth is an altogether different creature with his clothes off.

Gareth tilts his head, pushing his hair down to one side of his neck. He has a great neck, long, slender and Phillip can go on and on about how much he wants to wrap his hands around the ring of it just tight enough to leave a beautiful bruise. He traces the underside of Gareth’s jaw with a thumb before stroking over the jut of his lower lip; both are soft, which shouldn’t be surprising, and yet Phillip finds himself completely transfixed by them.

“You gonna suck me off?” he asks, voice raspy with lust.

“ _Uh-huh._ ” Gareth nods, flushing. His skin is dewy from the shower, smelling clean like soap. He’s panting, mouth red and wet like his cock which is rapidly filling and canting up between his thighs. His eyes are dark and fathomless. He wants it, he wants it so bad, his breath going funny when he rubs his cheek against Phillip’s bulge.

“Yeah? You wanna suck that cock? Wanna put it in your mouth?” 

Gareth nods again, frantically this time, a desperate moan scraping the back of his throat. 

Phillip grins, leaning further back on his elbows, watching him watch him too. “Come on then,” he prods, shoving his pants down the rest of the way before freeing his dick. Even his own touch feels so good, a balm against his heated skin. He taps the wet head of his cock against Gareth’s lower lip and Gareth follows the motion with such blind obedience that it’s a little embarrassing even for him. He’s already wetting his tongue, dipping his head to take Phillip fully into his mouth, grasping him by the base and squeezing firmly. He has such soft hands. 

Phillip grabs a fistful of Gareth’s hair, then he starts thrusting leisurely, in, out, in. There’s something to be said about watching his dick disappear inside Gareth’s pink plush little mouth. It’s mesmerizing; he’s clearly made to suck dick, his eyes filling with tears with every deep swallow, his drool making a mess everywhere.

In the end, Phillip fucks him, because he has little self control and Gareth begs him with so few words. Guys like Gareth, they’re made to take it up the ass, soft little twinks that need a serious reaming before they’re ever truly satisfied. Phillip fucks Gareth on his hands and knees, giving it to him hard and fast and dirty, the only way Phillip plays it. Phillip’s balls slapping Gareth’s ass is the only sound in the room aside from their heavy breathing and Phillip can’t get enough of it, it’s like his mind is sharpened by lust and desire and he exists solely to fuck and fuck; he gives it to Gareth harder, and then Gareth comes all over the bed with a desperate wail that has his elbows giving out from underneath him, his ass jutting up in the air. 

Gareth’s lips move soundlessly against the pillows, his tongue lolling out and leaving a small puddle of drool _._ Phillip continues fucking him until he comes too, shuddering and shuddering and tugging at Gareth’s hair for traction.

He grinds his orgasm into that sweet little ass, wishing for a moment he wasn’t wearing a condom so he could see his come leaking out of Gareth’s hole. Would have been lovely, that. Phillip could have licked it out of him, fed him his come through a kiss. 

Gareth makes a noise of complaint when Phillip bottoms out completely but Phillip elects to ignore it as he slumps against him, a dead weight that Gareth tries to wriggle off his back more than few times. Phillip thinks he blacks out for a few seconds. He’s still dizzy when Gareth nudges him with his ass, a subtle hint to get him to fuck off. 

“You’re heavy,” Gareth grouches. “I can’t feel my ribs.”

Phillip rolls off him, flopping onto his side of the bed, his dick soft against his thigh. He rolls the condom off, ties the end, chucks it across the room where it misses its mark by several feet and hits the wall instead before sliding down the floor in a slow descent.

“I have an idea,” he says once they’ve both calmed down enough, lying in a pool of their own sweat and semen. Disgusting, now, in the aftermath, but all sex must be dirty to be remotely enjoyable. “I think we’re sexually compatible and it will be in our best interest to see each other in this capacity. Do you know what I mean?”

If it sounds like a business proposal, that’s because it is and Phillip is never one to beat around the bush. He’s just had the best sex of his life. _Again_. Courtesy of Gareth. The first time Phillip had chalked it up to luck, the second and third, to sheer horniness. Now he’s certain: Gareth will be one of the best lays of his life. He makes noises that go straight to Phillip’s dick, and he likes pretty much anything Phillip does to him, whether it’s Phillip fucking his mouth or his ass or pinching his nipples or kissing him while stroking his dick like they have all the time in the world.

“What capacity?” Garethwipes come off his stomach, sitting up.

“A sexual capacity,” Phillip says. “Just casual sex. No strings attached. It’ll be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Somehow that sounded better in his head. Now that it’s out in the open, _however_.

“So we’ll be sex friends,” Gareth says, slowly. How he makes it sound so plebeian is a talent.

“Call it whatever you like,” Phillip shrugs. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

Gareth just looks at him. 

“I just wanted to make sure.” Phillip grabs his phone from the nightstand. “You should sleep on it. I’ll give you my number and you can call me once you’ve decided. I know you enjoyed the sex, don’t lie to yourself, you big slut. We can work around each other’s schedules, whatever we want. Really, it’s just sex. No fuss.” He casts Gareth a sly grin but Gareth just looks like a mixture of offended disbelief and confusion. “What do you say?”

Slowly, with some measure of reluctance, Gareth crawls onto all fours and starts digging through his clothes which he’s left in a neat pile on the nightstand. It gives Phillip a great view of his ass which is completely and utterly wrecked and which Phillip still wants to take a bite out of and maybe bury his face in till he runs out of air. Gareth swipes his phone open. Phillip grins. This is the start of something good, he thinks. He feels the weight of his certainty in his very bones.

“I look forward to hearing from you,” Phillip tells him, after he’s saved Gareth’s number, waggling his eyebrows to lighten the mood. Gareth just looks vaguely ill. Phillip reaches for his pack of cigarettes, closing his eyes once the nicotine hits. When he opens them again, he sees Gareth watching him with a stupid expression, the same one that made Phillip want to bring him home the first time, just to see what he looked like under his clothes.

“Should you be smoking?” Gareth looks up at the smoke detector. 

“No,” Phillip agrees, shrugging again. “I’m actually trying to quit.”

*

Phillip isn’t Gareth’s boyfriend, a fact he keeps trying to drill into Gareth even after Gareth calls him up in the middle of the night to cry about a bad dream. He’s had a few of them since coming to DC for a work transfer. Phillip keeps telling him to see a therapist, but Gareth either can’t afford one or doesn’t believe in the power of sitting in comfortable chairs telling a complete stranger all your problems because he keeps calling Phillip every damn time. 

And Phillip always answers because he mistakes these calls for a different kind of call altogether. He’s an idiot, and he’s being an idiot right now, picking up a call he knows he’ll regret.

“Slow down,” he says when he hears Gareth’s tearful voice on the other line. “Jesus. What is it this time? More blood?” Gareth had a lot of those; it’s starting to worry him.

“No,” Gareth says, his breath hitching pathetically. “I dreamt about my dad.”

Gareth’s dad is dead. He’s been dead for over two decades and from what Phillip can glean, he was not a very nice person. His own dad was a pretty tough guy, all American, a little gruff, not so touchy feely, but he was dependable and kind and taught Phillip how to drive and say the word _fuck_ in a dozen different ways with the inflection all different each time. He’s also dying of cancer. Phillip hasn’t seen him in over a year. 

So Phillip knows a fair bit about dads safe to say. Not everyone’s beat them or called them a little queer or locked them in a dark room for hours hoping to toughen them up. 

He drives over to Gareth’s apartment. It’s only twenty minutes away from Capitol Hill. Gareth lives on the second floor of a five-story brownstone overlooking a Chinese General Drug store. It’s a lot less upscale than Phillip is expecting, but it’s a good neighborhood to be in and safe enough at night. 

Phillip knows Gareth’s just a pencil pusher, an entry-level cog in the corporate machine, that he can’t afford better housing than this so it’s unfair to expect anything more. It’s homey though, if a little small, sparse with telltale signs of a recent move: boxes everywhere, even used as stand-ins for certain pieces of furniture. There’s an air mattress next to the radiator pipes, covered in about a million different quilts, a haphazard pile of paperbacks next to it along with a potted plant in need of watering. Flyers and receipts crowd one side of the mini-fridge. Gareth doesn’t even have a dishwasher; he has plastic dish rack where he leaves his plates to dry. This place is a fucking hovel.

Phillip doesn’t know where to sit; there are only two chairs available and one is a bean bag with a very suspicious stain on it. Gareth makes him tea meanwhile, moving around in the cramped kitchen, his dirty robe touching the floor. 

“Listen,” Phillip says when Gareth finishes making his tea, heavy with cream. “Do you want to have sex instead? I’m really bad at this as you can very well see. I-” 

“Okay,” Gareth says.

“What?”

“I said okay,” Gareth repeats, rubbing his left elbow and looking everywhere but Phillip. Phillip sets the tea down, and pulls Gareth into his lap once he’s seated in the bean bag he’s been dreading the whole time. It’s filled with tiny styrofoam balls which means whichever way he moves, the thing shifts along with him, but it’s better than the floor, or the bed which he’s been eyeing with equal parts curiosity and horror.

Phillip pushes Gareth’s robe off his shoulders: underneath Gareth’s only wearing a thin t-shirt along with a pair of fitted cotton boxers. He’s sweet like this, unassuming, with his dark green socks drooping down his ankles and his hair smelling sweet from a recent shower. One thing he likes about Gareth: he always showers before sex. And he always smells so nice, even his sweat. Nothing Phillip can pinpoint, just a general clean scent underlaying his sweat.

Phillip starts palming his ass with both hands, slow, to ease him into the mood of things. Gareth sometimes takes a while when he’s in a mood like this. Then he sighs, the kind of sigh that hits Phillip straight in the groin. 

Minutes later Gareth starts rubbing himself against Phillip’s stomach, keeping a firm grip of Phillip’s shoulders as his breathing deepens and angles his face for a kiss Phillip is still unwilling to give. He’s getting hard, getting excited. Which is good because Phillip has been dying to fuck him the moment he walked through the door.

Phillip picks him up by the backs of his thighs and sets him down on the air mattress. The quilts smell musty, like they’ve been living in a box a long time, never aired out. Gareth’s hair fans out around him, his arms too, spread above his head, with the palms open. 

“Lift your shirt, I wanna suck on those titties,” Phillip says, kneeling between his spread legs. 

“What,” Gareth says, spluttering. “My _what_?”

Phillip rolls his eyes. Gareth is still new to dirty talk, still new to a lot of things, but he’ll learn the nuances later on when Phillip has the time and patience to teach him. 

For now Phillip says, “Just lift your fucking shirt, Gareth all right? Thank you. Jesus.”

And breathing hard, Gareth peers up at him curiously, before sliding the hem of his shirt high above his collarbones. He’s got these — these nipples, and it’s the weirdest thing because Phillip gets so crazy just looking at them. Small, pink, like they’d hurt really easily if Phillip so much as pinched them, which is what Phillip ends up doing most of the time anyway in addition to sucking on them like he’s nursing for milk.  

Phillip presses the flat of his tongue over one nipple, flicking it up in a long stroke. He does the same to the other one, but closes his teeth gently around the delicate nub until it hardens into a stiff point. Gareth makes a soft noise, pushing out his chest, lifting his hips. 

“You like that?” Phillip grins. “Like it to hurt a little?”

Gareth nods shyly. “Uh-huh,” he breathes, shuddering as Phillip rubs a thumb over one nipple, teasing it again with the pad of his finger, flicking it until it stiffens further and Gareth hisses out a breath. He glides his knuckles down the soft plane of Gareth’s stomach, following the thin fuzz of hair at his belly, barely there. Phillip tugs at his boxers, and Gareth takes it as his cue to shimmy out of them, folding them primly over one side of the bed along with his shirt which he twists out of with less grace. Then he lies on his back on top of the quilts, his breathing raspy, spreading his legs without any prompting, his hands folded under his knees. He doesn’t bother taking his socks off and that drives Phillip wild, fumbling for the lube lying in a sad corner by the mattress, among the detritus of Gareth’s other things.

Phillip pushes into him in one long stroke, filling him up to the hilt. He’s wonderfully tight, beautifully responsive, clutching Phillip like a warm snug glove. Phillip sneaks a kiss up the side of his neck, biting the shell of his ear as he begins to fuck Gareth deeply and leisurely. The mattress shifts with them; the floor groans. Gareth closes his eyes and wraps his arms around Phillip, murmuring unintelligible nonsense into the side of his neck, clinging hard. Outside, someone’s dog starts barking. Phillip can hear the sound of traffic not too far off, the ambient noise of it like music underscoring the pulsing silence. Cars honking, the last train of the night. They come not long after.

Before Phillip can roll off him, Gareth reaches out with both arms and hugs him. Phillip stares at the top of his orange head. He shrugs him off but Gareth grips him firmly. He shrugs him off again but Gareth won’t let go, insinuating himself like a comma at his side and clutching him like a limpet. He’s got surprising upper body strength; Phillip hadn’t seen that coming. He’s a little impressed. 

“Don’t go,” Gareth says. “At least wait till I’m asleep.”

Phillip stares at him again. Gareth is pathetic, that much is true, always with his head down, always meek, but he’s also a great fuck, willing to let Phillip do pretty much whatever he wants. Phillip can offer sympathy when it’s needed, sincere or not; he’s not a complete asshole.

He pats Gareth’s back awkwardly with the hand that’s not squashed under his weight. “Sorry you had a bad dream,” he says, still patting him. 

“I get them a lot,” Gareth confesses, and this is true and doesn’t Phillip know it in the three months he’s known him. “It’s fine.” Gareth rubs his face against Phillip’s chest and Phillip does his level best to hold back a groan. He better not get snot on this shirt, or swear to god —

“Thanks,” Gareth says, interrupting his thoughts. “I mean, for being here. That’s pretty cool of you.”

“Sure,” Phillip says, no less awkward. “You’re welcome, I guess.” He stares at the ceiling. Rot has started setting in, darkening the paint. Since he’ll be here for the time being anyway he decides that he might as well take off his pants. He’s folding them up next to his jacket, his back turned to Gareth, when Gareth hugs him again from behind, taking him by surprise and resting his cheek on Phillip’s spine. _Jesus_. 

Phillip closes his eyes, employing the breathing techniques he’s learned in therapy. 

“Was it really a bad dream?” he says, swatting Gareth off so he can squeeze himself in the shitty air mattress with the million quilts knitted by Gareth’s grandma probably. 

Gareth rubs his arm, shrugging in answer. He parks his hair over one ear as he waits for Phillip to get settled. When Phillip’s found a spot, lying on his side, he shuffles over, planting himself in the dead center of Phillip’s arms as if he’s got any right to be there. It’s the most bizarre moment of Phillip’s life, but he says nothing about it, just as he says nothing for a while after Gareth tells him about how his dad used to beat him whenever his mom wasn’t around. 

“My dad — he has cancer,” Phillip tells him. “Not that I’m trying to one-up your story or anything, god no. I just thought — since we’re sharing stories about our dads anyway and I didn’t have a lot of them…” He sees the stricken look in Gareth face and clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry! I’m sorry to hear that, in any case. That he has cancer. That sounds pretty bad.”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is.” Now it’s Phillip’s turn to shrug, and he stares at the pale scar on Gareth’s scalp before turning to the ceiling again, swallowing. “He doesn’t deserve it though. He was one of the good guys. Why am I talking about him like he’s already dead? Anyway,” he trails off. “Can we talk about something else? This is depressing.” 

He feels Gareth shudder in his arms then nod his head. “What do you want to talk about?” he asks.

Good question. Phillip doesn’t know. Philosophy, religion, the rising cost of living, but he’s not that deep and he hates any kind of small talk unless it’s a prelude to something: a business transaction, sex, a favour. Not post-coital whatever this is. 

“You should get an actual bed,” he points out. “What the hell kind of setup is this? At least get a fucking proper mattress.”

“Maybe next month,” Gareth yawns. “Or the month after that when I have enough money saved up.”

“It’s just a mattress,” Phillip snorts. “Not a fucking investment.”

“Not everyone is swimming in money like you are,” Gareth tells him, and it’s the first cutting remark he’s made that Phillip is actually stunned into silence. 

*

The mattress dies a noble death, two weeks later, when Phillip is fucking Gareth on his hands and knees on the thing. It’s a midday fuck, meant to take the edge off before Gareth goes back to work and his boss realizes he’s missing. Lunch ended an hour ago. His office is in one of those hulking high rises that crowd the skyline like something out of a sci-fi novel, shiny and geometric and defying the laws of physics. Phillip doesn’t even know what he does for a living. He’s in research, he guesses. He always has stacks of paper lying around and the company name on his lanyard sounds like a Pharmaceutical brand.

“Do you still want to fuck?” Phillip asks, slumped on the one side of the mattress which has deflated considerably. Gareth is on his front, lying next to him catching his breath, his ass completely bare, his thighs wet with shimmers of lube. Gareth spits out his tie which Phillip has stuffed into his mouth to shut him up. 

Phillip reaches over and wriggles a finger inside Gareth’s asshole, the middle one so he can feel exactly where Gareth is still hot and open.  

“ _Yeah_ ,” Gareth moans, and shuffles sidewards so he can seat himself in Phillip’s lap, straddling his hips. He has a soft double chin when he dips his head, guiding Phillip’s cock back into him with practiced ease. “Like this?” he says, once the head pops through and he rocks back on his heels to take the rest of him in. 

“Hell yeah.” Phillip grins, folding his arms behind his head. “Ride that cock, baby. Milk it with your ass.”

Gareth stops grinding down abruptly. “Why do you say things like that? We’re not in porn.”

“It’s sexy,” Phillip says. “Isn’t it sexy? Makes you hot for it. I mean, look at you. You should try it. Dirty talk is fun. It spices things up.”

“Okay,” Gareth says, easing down on Phillip’s cock, slow and measured. “But what do I say?”

“Whatever the hell you want. You can describe how it feels for you, when you ride a big cock. You like that don’t you? A smaller dick won’t make you come, it won’t be enough to satisfy you. You need to be filled up completely. To sit on a fat Jewish dick like mine to come.”

“ _Hng_ ,” Gareth pants. “Yes, yes. I like very big dicks! And your dick is the biggest! Wait, you’re Jewish?”

Phillip looks at him. “Yeah, is there a problem?”

“No,” Gareth says. “I just didn’t expect that.”

“Well, it’s not like I bring out my kippa every time we have sex or talk about what a terrible time I had during my bar mitzvah. Don’t worry, my family’s non-practicing.” That’s not always true. Phillip and his brothers and sister all went to Hebrew school, and then one day his mother sort of got sick of it all and cooked a nice roast beef dinner before asking Phillip if he wanted a bar mitzvah at all. “Your father and I won’t take it against you if you don’t, of course,” she’d said. “Some traditions are all about keeping appearances and if you’d rather we give you some money, we’d be more than happy to oblige. What do you want to do Phillip?” 

Phillip chose the bar mitzvah. Years later, he still doesn’t know why, when his present self would have chosen the money. 

Gareth giggles nervously. “You’re funny,” he tells Phillip.

“I get that a lot,” Phillip says, and flips Gareth onto his back so he can fuck him with his toes pointing toward the ceiling. The action, it jars the mattress and displaces it a few centimeters from the wall. By the time they’ve finished, it’s deflated completely, an empty balloon with all the air leaked out, and they’re practically lying on the floor in a pile of quilts.

“We’ll get you a new bed,” Phillip says, sitting up and lighting up a cigarette. He’s trying to quit. A week later he makes good on his promise, but only because Gareth keeps complaining about a bad back when he comes over to Phillip’s apartment for his weekly fuck. It’s a tacit arrangement, and it’s not like either of them has anywhere to be on a Friday night. 

They stroll through a small furniture store downtown, trendy and popular among young twenty-somethings. The prices seem fair enough though it’s not IKEA. Phillip took a woodworking class once in high school and he failed it horribly but he can recognize good craftsmanship when he sees it. Phillip’s only gripe so far is that Gareth keeps trying to hold his hand as if they’re some kind of couple. He’s not even subtle about it; he’s walking very close and keeps touching Phillip’s arm. 

Phillip swats his hand for the fifth time in a row. “Look,” he says, dragging Gareth to a secluded corner, “I’m not your boyfriend, okay? How many times do I have to tell you? I’m only shopping with you because it’s partially my fault your mattress broke and you’re sleeping on the floor. Stop trying to hold my hand, Gareth.”

“But I thought—”

“Fuck what you thought. We’re not even friends.” The words are out before he can censor himself. When Phillip was a kid, he broke the kitchen window. He was angry at his mom at the time, for the usual myriad of reasons, and decided throwing a baseball at the window was the best revenge. Halfway into it, he realized he wasn’t all that angry anymore but it was too late and the glass had shattered into pieces. It’s the same feeling of helpless regret washing over him now; two parts horror, one part grief. His fucking mouth. When will he ever learn to just shut up.

“Okay don’t look at me like that, like I’m some kind of a heartless asshole. Do you want the daybed or the double bed? We’ll go out for lunch after. I’m paying for everything. Come on.”

“I want the one with the canopy,” Gareth says, completely deadpan.

“What?” Phillip blinks. “The fucking canopy? What the hell?”

Gareth rolls his eyes. He’s very easy to read; he keeps fiddling with the hem of his jacket, pulling his shoulders up to his ears, all stiff. He must hate Phillip by now. He should. Phillip has been rebuffing him for months, ignoring every and any attempt at affection. He knows Gareth may be quiet and mild-mannered, but he’s not an idiot; Gareth knows what Phillip is doing. Phillip has told him before, the second night they fucked: _never mistake this for what it isn’t._ What this isn’t is a relationship. It’s just casual sex. With lunches on the side on occasion, sometimes a new bed.

“I was joking. I like the double bed,” Gareth sighs. 

Phillip lets Gareth pick a mattress to go along with it: equally sturdy, made of foam this time, not filled with air because Gareth shouldn’t live like a broke college kid. Phillip pays for it at the counter, to be delivered the following week. They have Pho for lunch, then coffee and cake for dessert in a little cafe with an adjacent bookshop selling nothing but used books. Phillip has one leg crossed over the other while he eats his apple tart. Gareth won’t even look at him. He’s staring at his tea, his mouth set in a sullen line. He wore his hair up today; there are fine strands feathering his neck. 

Fine, Phillip thinks angrily, resentment welling up in the deepest, most vicious parts of him. Let him sulk like a little kid. Let him wallow. He’s not going to be guilted into doing something he doesn’t want; he’s not Gareth’s boyfriend. 

Gareth props his chin on a fist. There’s a stain on the upper corner of his t-shirt from where he’s splashed himself drinking his tea in one quick swallow. He stares out the window, at the pedestrians thronged on one side of the street, waiting for the light to turn. He rubs his cheek and something about the casualness of it dampens Phillip’s anger like a cool balm. 

“I want to go home,” Gareth says, out of the blue. It’s only two pm. Phillip offers to walk him to the Metro. 

At the crosswalk, Phillip grabs Gareth’s hand in the guise of hurrying him along before the street light changes, green to red, but Gareth knows a concession when he sees one. His hand is soft. Phillip shouldn’t be surprised because he’s kissed his hands before, the outside and inside of it, has had it wrapped around his dick numerous times, has even bitten one after Gareth had dared to touch himself after Phillip had expressly ordered him not to, not yet. 

Hands reveal so much more about a person than anything ever could, and Phillip is drawn to Gareth’s, like a true magnetic north. 

Gareth squeezes his hand and Phillip snaps out of his trance, letting go once they reach the other side of the street. It’s like waking up after a long dream, the sound bleeding all around him at a too loud volume, everything too bright, too much. He shrugs it off, can’t. “I’ll call you,” he says, coming to grips with himself, or at least trying to. “I’ll see you around.”

Phillip walks away, shaking his hand out with quick movements.

*

Phillip turns thirty on a Monday. He doesn’t feel any different. But he doesn’t have any weed left, either so maybe that’s the problem. He’s pissed everyone off that doesn’t want to sleep with him; there’s no one left with whom to celebrate. He ignores the texts from his mother and sister, wishing him a happy birthday. He ignores the one from his older brother too, asking about the money he’s borrowed, what a champ. 

“Call in sick,” he tells Gareth over the phone, pouring cereal into the bowl because he has no food left in the fridge. “It’s an emergency. I need you to come over. Also while you’re at it,” he throws open all the cupboards, “I’m out of food. I’ll send you a list.”

“Phillip,” Gareth says. He’s probably on his way to work right now. 

“Please,” Phillip says sweetly, in sing-song. “I’ll do that thing you like best, and I’ll pay you back anyway for the groceries. Please Gareth. Here’s a hint. When I say thing I mean the sexual thing. With your ass.”

Gareth sighs noisily. It’s clear he’s getting embarrassed. 

“It’s my birthday,” Phillip says.

“Your what?” Gareth screeches. “Why didn’t you tell me — I didn’t get you anything!”

“Relax,” Phillip snorts. “Consider this favor your present. I’m starving right now. Can you cook?”

“I’ve practically raised myself,” Gareth says. “Of course I know how to cook. I’ll be there in an hour. Send me that list.”

He shows up on Phillip’s doorstep on the dot, an hour later, no more no less. Phillip was right; he was just on his way to work. He’s still in the clothes he wears to the office which Phillip has already seen before and which consist of ugly beige trousers and an ill-fitting dress shirt. The tie is equally hideous, a paisley vomit green affair. He looks like he’s living in the 80’s. It’s not a good look on him. 

Gareth dumps everything on the kitchen counter. He knows the layout of Phillip’s apartment well enough to move through it in the dark; he’s been here several times for a fuck. He likes to poke around in the kitchen, in the middle of the night when he thinks Phillip has fallen asleep, pouring himself a glass of water and marveling over the pictures of family Phillip has on his fridge. He didn’t come from a big family like Phillip. He was an only child and his mom worked nonstop while his dad stayed at home and beat the shit out of him.

Phillip watches him putter around for a while, filling the cupboards and fridge with bread, eggs, milk, and all the essentials, with some snacks thrown in for good measure, even ice cream, probably because it’s Phillip’s birthday.

Gareth keeps moving. He shrugs out of his suit jacket, undoes his tie, folds his shirt up to his elbows and throws an apron on. “I’m making you a birthday meal,” he announces, tying back his hair. Whenever it’s up like that, in a loose ponytail, Phillip doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, where to look. Gareth’s neck is beautiful, pale and flawless like the pillar of a harp. His hands are the same, moving deftly over the kitchen counter, fast like a magician’s.

“What do you want me to make?” Gareth asks. “Any special requests?”

Phillip shrugs. “Surprise me,” he says.

Gareth makes Shepherd’s pie. He’s dicing up carrots when he cuts himself by accident, and all that follows is a soft, surprised, “Oh.” There’s a fair bit of blood. Gareth drops the knife on the cutting board and stares at the blood dripping down his forefinger. He’s sweating, shaky. 

Phillip touches him on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “ _Hey_.” 

He doesn’t budge. 

Phillip grabs his wrist and turns the tap on, washes the blood away under the cold spray. The cut isn’t that deep but Gareth always had an aversion to blood. He has nightmares about it for god’s sake, deeply unsettling ones where he cuts himself over and over on sharp objects, where a paper cut isn’t just a paper cut and his coworkers all stare at him in cold soundless rooms. 

Phillip digs out the medical kit from the depths of his dresser drawer and sorts him out with a plaster but Gareth’s still shaken, still rubbing at his chest as if he’s in the midst of a panic attack.

“It’s just a stupid cut,” Gareth mumbles. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re sure,” Phillip says. 

“Of course I’m sure!” Gareth shoves him off. “I’m not a child!”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you are. I’m trying to be nice here!” Phillip yells back. 

“Well, then fuck off! I don’t need your pity!”

Phillip slams the medical kit down. He’s breathing hard, his voice has risen. It’s not like him to get angry like this, when people have provoked him for less. He shouldn’t care. _Fuck Gareth._ He stomps off to the living room, turning the TV on to full volume. He’s expecting Gareth to follow, to apologize and make amends, put his sweet orange head on Phillip’s knee in supplication but nothing like that happens and Phillip falls asleep watching bad daytime TV. It’s what people with no future do, he hears his brother Paul’s voice say in his head. 

When he wakes up, the apartment smells like pie, and there’s food on the table, salad, store-bought wine and a birthday cake spelling his name with only one L. 

“Sorry about the cake. It was a rush job,” Gareth says. He’s wearing one of Phillip’s old t-shirts from Georgetown, the hem stretched out over his collar bones. He’s freshly showered and it’s the sweetest thing. His hair is up again, curling in little tendrils over his eyebrows. Phillip wonders if it’s meant to drive him crazy, because there it is again, the long delicate column of his neck.  

“Happy birthday, you dick,” Gareth says, flicking a lighter open to light the candles on his cake.

“Thanks,” Phillip laughs, and he eats his weight in pie and cake and fucks Gareth on the bed, the curtains drawn to a magnificent view of the bleeding afternoon skyline. 

Thirty years old and he kisses Gareth on the mouth, tasting frosting, tasting fruit. He doesn’t even know how old Gareth is, doesn’t know a lot about him except that he had a shitty dad and he grew up in a little village in Ireland where the sheep outnumbered the people 2:1. He never talks about his mom, not in the way Phillip often talks about his, which is troubling, his therapist would probably think, as Phillip never shuts up about his idealized childhood.

He keeps Gareth naked the whole day, at his beck and call, to fuck whenever and however he wants, in the mouth, in the ass, on his back with his wrists tied to the bed posts, bent over his lap with his ass in the air, bruised with palm marks. He’s sweet, squirming in Phillip’s lap, or pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, his nipples rubbing the glass, his breath condensing the surface. His palms squeak on the glass with every deep thrust Phillip delivers, and he rocks back on Phillip’s cock like a greedy slut always wanting more, rubbing himself against the window in quick jerky movements. It’s a beautiful day outside; the skies clear and absent of rain, people walking their dogs. The building across the street has luminous windows, shut like eyes except for one. 

“It’s my birthday,” Phillip bites into the skin of Gareth’s neck, when he complains about people seeing them. “So I get away with everything.”

And Gareth lets him, complacent as much as he is complicit in every act. He moans when Phillip kisses him, his body unfurling like a map under Phillip’s questing hands, belying nothing. Phillip knows every dip and scar and freckle by now, smooth desert tundra and unchartered terrain; he runs his mouth over all of them, presses down with his fingers to mark every place he’s been. 

Afterwards, they settle down to sleep, tired, achy, Gareth’s hair everywhere on the pillows, a red as deep as the setting sky outside.

Phillip thinks: _I might want to be good to him someday._ And it’s such a dangerous thought that he doesn’t dare pursue the rest of it.

*

Gareth works very hard at whatever it is he does. He puts in the hours; sometimes more than the required amount. Phillip knows this because he sees the bags under Gareth’s eyes, and the only type of sad sack that looks for love in a gay club is the kind that hates themselves and works a shitty thankless job. 

Also, Gareth complains about his job a fair amount on the days Phillip invites him over to clean his apartment and make him food. He hates having sex in Gareth’s apartment: it’s depressing and not very tidy and he’s always worried someone’s going to steal his car. Parking is hell.

One day as they’re walking to the parking lot from the club, Gareth lists to the side very suddenly and nearly topples onto a pile of snow. Phillip catches him in time — he has fast reflexes born of his dad’s many attempts to turn him into some kind of athlete — and he shakes Gareth a few times but it appears that he’s fallen deeply asleep, stopping mid-sentence. He looks like he needs it, upon closer inspection. His lips have gone anemically pale; his cheeks are sunken. 

Phillip knows the heft of him more than he cares to acknowledge, the fact troubling in itself, so he knows that Gareth has lost some weight. And he’s already a thin guy, erring on the side of skinny. It’s cause for alarm. Hasn’t he been feeding himself? He makes a mean Shepherd’s fucking pie. Why hasn’t he been eating well?

Phillip carries him to his car, drives him home where he lays him down on the sofa while he figures out what to do with him. The plan tonight was to have sex until either of them couldn’t move, and then maybe have Gareth fix him some kind of dinner, a stew, or whatever he can cook up with leftover pasta and shrimp. Phillip can always order out or if he’s feeling fancy, hop over to the nearest Italian restaurant. But why go through all the trouble when he can have Gareth cook for him? When they can stay indoors in bed and not have to bother with anyone else.

Phillip’s never taken care of anyone before; he’s the baby of his family, the last of four. 

When he was a kid, he came down with a cold after playing too long in the snow and his mother sat with him inside all week and fed him soup.

Phillip’s never made soup before, not for himself nor for anyone. He heats some now in a can when Gareth shows signs of stirring a couple of hours into his sleep but it’s a false alarm, he doesn’t wake. 

Phillip falls asleep too on top of the covers, dreaming of snow on every surface, inescapable, dreaming of Gareth: his red hair in the wind bright like a flag. Phillip slips and slides and falls on the ice. He snorts awake staring at the ceiling, sweating in his clothes.

Gareth is watching him. Quietly, like a complete creep, like he’s been awake a while. It’s early in the morning judging from the light outside and how it covers everything in a grey haze. Phillip blinks. He tries to remember his dream but it’s fading fast and it’s probably not that important. “Hi,” he says, voice raspy with sleep. “You passed out.”

“I might be a little bit sleep deprived,” Gareth admits. He flushes. He’s so pale Phillip sees the color rising up to his cheeks and down his neck. The same is true when Phillip is fucking him. His face gets so red and so does the back of his ears. He’s always embarrassed by half of the things Phillip makes him say when he takes his cock, but only half. Phillip knows for a fact he doesn’t completely hate all of it. He only tries to pretend that he does.

“A little bit is putting it nicely,” Phillip says mildly. “When was the last time you had any decent sleep?”

“Slow down mum, I’ve just been pulling all-nighters, geez.” Gareth waves away his concern. “I’ll be fine. I’m just working on a project. Did I really pass out? I feel like shite.”

“You look like it too,” Phillip notes, not with any ill intent but matter of factly. He touches Gareth’s cheek. Gareth sucks in a breath like a little kid, widening his eyes in shock. 

He’s not sure why he just did that. _What the fuck. What the fuck._

“What the hell are you doing,” Phillip asks, annoyed, still cradling Gareth’s jaw.

“I don’t know,” Gareth confesses. “You’re touching me and it’s very weird.”

“I touch you all the time,” Phillip points out. Then he amends it to, “I fuck you all the time.”

“True but you don’t…” Gareth swallows and looks away shiftily. “Never mind. It’s stupid. And I’m still a little dizzy.” He closes his eyes and then opens them. He has such long eyelashes, they’re fine like feathers, a shade lighter than the hair on his head, but still very red. “I’m hungry. Is there anything to eat?”

“I microwaved some soup but it’s cold now,” Phillip says. “I can try cooking and by cooking I mean boil you an egg because I lack what my brother Paul likes to call any culinary flair.”

“You mean you’re a shite cook,” Gareth states.

Phillip almost laughs. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. I’m a shit cook.” 

“How about those eggs then,” Gareth says after a minute, when Phillip finally lets his cheek go and keeps to his side of the bed.

He goes to make him those eggs, soft boiled with the yolk just the right amount of runny, serving them in a bowl. Gareth eats them with his hands, sitting cross-legged in Phillip’s bed wearing Phillip’s pajamas, watching snow fall outside Phillip’s windows. He looks positively dowdy, with his hair down to his shoulders in electric tufts. Outside it’s a blizzard, everything covered in white like in Phillip’s dream. He wonders if he’s still asleep.

“I wish I didn’t have to come to work tomorrow,” Gareth says.

“Then don’t,” Phillip says. “Call in sick.”

“Well then who’s going to pay my rent? Easy for you to say, you live like a —” He glances furtively around. 

“Lifelong bachelor?” Phillip suggests.

Gareth spits out an eggshell into his palm. “I was going for rich bastard.”

“Ha fucking ha,” Phillip intones.

“Seriously though, what do you even do for a living?” Gareth looks genuinely curious, turning his body towards Phillip inquisitively.

“I’m a drug dealer,” Phillip says, waggling his eyebrows.

“What?” says Gareth, alarmed.

“I’m kidding,” Phillip lies.“I have a nice fat inheritance,” he says. “It keeps me warm at night.”

“Oh,” Gareth says, and it’s almost funny, watching the disappointment slot into place like the last domino falling. “That explains so much.”

*

Phillip runs into him in a coffee shop of all places. Or doesn’t run into him because his first instinct is to walk the opposite direction and pretend it never happened. Phillip is waiting for his macchiato when he spots a familiar head of hair. It’s Gareth at one of the back tables, talking to a coworker and gesturing emphatically. Neither of them notice him.

Gareth laughs and touches his coworker on the elbow, an older man in an equally horrific suit.  He has a receding hairline. They’re probably on their lunch break. 

Phillip thinks about it all day, the laughing, the touching. It drives him a little crazy. His therapist often said he liked to make something out of nothing, or maybe that was his mother or his sister. He gets the three confused sometimes. 

“I saw you yesterday,” he tells Gareth later, in the post-coital hours of dawn when he’s too fucked out to make sense of anything. “At lunch. At the coffee shop by the museum. Who was that with you?”

Gareth is already half asleep. He’s made a habit of burying his face in Phillip’s shoulder so his voice comes out all muffled, thick with fatigue and hoarse from screaming when he says, “Oh, what now? Who? A friend from work.” He blinks murkily. “Why’d you ask?”

“Nothing, no reason,” Phillip says. He leaves it at that.

It’s just, he’s never seen Gareth in the context of his own life: a living breathing entity existing all on his own. It’s jarring, and forces Phillip to think of him as a real person, not just his friend of the nighttime. It makes him think of Gareth in other capacities too, makes Phillip wonder what he does on the weekends Phillip is too stoned to call him over to his apartment for a fuck, if he has any friends of his own or if all he does is just sit around in his shitty apartment drinking too-sweet tea when he clocks off work.

It’s possible. But it’s also possible that he lives a rich full life outside of their arrangement, that he goes antiquing on Sundays and has a book club every other Saturday and that he has a number of different hobbies Phillip will never be privy to because he’d never think to ask; he made it perfectly clear from the get go, he doesn’t give a shit. 

He still doesn’t give a shit, but it’s the strangest thing. He wants to know what Gareth is doing when he isn’t around Phillip. Does he still have those dreams, Phillip wonders. He’s stopped talking about them ever since Phillip begged him to talk about something else, something less maudlin. 

And where did he learn how to cook? Who taught him? Phillip grew up with two brothers and a sister but by the time he was old enough to want them around, they’d already moved out for good. Everything he knows how to do he learned by trial and error. He burnt his hand on a hot stove, broke his arm climbing a tree, and drove his dad’s car into a ditch, after stepping on the accelerator, not the brakes.

This part, he’s learning too, how to be good, and it’s the most excruciating lesson in self-sabotage.

*

Phillip drives to Gareth’s through the snow. He comes up to the apartment and the heating is so bad he elects to keep his coat on, moving to the kitchen to pour himself instant coffee. Gareth is huddled by the radiator. His bed is the centerpiece of his apartment, the only piece of furniture not bought secondhand with obvious signs of wear. It juts out like a sore thumb. 

“Are you all right?” Gareth asks, watching Phillip with curious eyes. Phillip doesn’t answer; he doesn’t know. He kneels on the bed, starts taking his clothes off, starting with his coat and then his scarf which he sheds on the floor in a pile. When he’s down to his shirt and jeans, Phillip finally asks, 

“Will you let me fuck you? Or are you too cold?”

“No, no it’s okay,” Gareth says, already nodding his head in assent and peeling back his blanket to let Phillip inside. He’s wearing two sweaters and loose tights that hug the lean shape of his legs. Phillip climbs inside, and it’s warmer inside than he anticipates, Gareth shivering when his cold skin touches his.

Gareth scoots sideways to give him room and Phillip grabs him almost immediately as soon as they’re settled, pushing a knee between his legs and kissing him on the mouth. Whatever inane thing he has to say is cut off abruptly as Gareth dissolves into the kiss without further complaint, winding his arms around Phillip’s neck. He loves to kiss. Sometimes he’ll want to do it for hours and Phillip never understood why, he who preferred to fuck and bite and scratch and push people to their limits in every way.

“I want to come inside you,” Phillip groans, rolling into him with deep thrusts, licking his panting mouth. He’s rough, like he always is, but mindful now of the creaking of the bed. Gareth’s had his neighbors complain a few times about the noise and Gareth can’t afford eviction. This is the only apartment near enough to his place of work that doesn’t put a dent in his savings; it’s a fifteen minute commute and only half an hour from Phillip’s own apartment. 

“Whu-what,” Gareth says, turning his face to Phillip like a baby bird’s, eyes half-closed, forehead creased. 

“Let me come in you, come on,” Phillip grunts. He’s done it a few times, when it became clear that both of them were clean and had no other sexual partners but each other. But Phillip wants to ask, wants to say it, something about the utter filthiness of it making his skin feel tight and electric. He already knows the answer but he wants to hear it from Gareth, feel that telling shudder, that obedient tilt of his body, Gareth arching up into him in agreement and his legs wrapping around him like a vice. 

“You want it, baby, you want me to give it to you?”

“Yes,” Gareth moans. “ _Yes, please_. Give me your come, I want it. I want it in me, _please._ ” He grinds down on Phillip’s cock, shameless, scrabbling to get more of Phillip in him even though Phillip’s already buried to the root, his balls pressed snugly against Gareth’s rim. 

Phillip suspects this is what they both have in common, that they’re greedy and want everything, the cake, the platter, and the silverware too, the whole fucking banquet. Gareth is just a little more refined in his appetites. Still waters run deep and all that. Whereas Phillip wants to grab everything before someone else takes it away.

He comes with a shout, pounding Gareth sweetly to the mattress and giving it all he’s got, till Gareth is an incoherent blubbering mess ruled by his need to come, hair in messy slashes across his face. Phillip blanks out for a second, then when he comes to, gives Gareth a few more thrusts before his cock slips out of him, and then he flops down to the opposite side of the bed to catch his breath, blankets twisting his lower torso with the movement. 

Gareth still hasn’t come. He’s breathing hard; his face is a splotchy red and so is his neck. And he’s dripping precome all over the wool of his sweater. Both he and Phillip are naked from the waist down. Gareth’s socks don’t match, and it’s always a mystery why. One of them even has a hole in the toe while other is Christmas-themed with a fading reindeer print.

“Knees up,” Phillip says, before he fixates on this inconsequential detail. He hovers over Gareth. “Knees up. I’ll eat you out while you jerk yourself off.”

Gareth nods sluggishly. He raises his knees and doesn’t start touching himself until Phillip presses his tongue to his stretched out rim, slopping his own come from Gareth’s hole with the flat of his tongue. There’s quite a lot of it, Phillip is a dirty bastard, and he stuffs three fingers inside Gareth, pumping them in and out until Gareth’s whole body seizes up and he comes with a low whimper, grabbing his chest with the hand not frantically stripping his dick.

Gareth peels the first sweater off. The one underneath it is relatively clean, and when Phillip slides his hands under the cotton as Gareth backs into him, he’s almost surprised to discover how warm his skin is. He presses his face to the back of Gareth’s neck, breathing in the mineral scent of him. His hair is soft against Phillip’s face, a curtain he can get lost in. Their legs are folded neatly under the blankets. He squeezes Gareth’s ribs until Gareth whimpers in discomfort.

“Hey,” Gareth says. “ _Ow_.”

His dad is dying. He got the call from his mom this morning. The cancer has spread and Phillip’s dad doesn’t have very long; there’s nothing, really, that the doctors could do for him. It was all smoke and mirrors until this point, throwing darts to see which treatment will work. 

“You should go see your dad,” Gareth whispers. 

“And let him see what a screw-up I’ve become?” Phillip rolls his eyes. “No way.”

“You’re not a screw-up,” Gareth says. “You’re many things but you’re not a screw-up.”

Phillip snorts into Gareth’s neck. The skin there is soft; he bites at it gently, rubbing his thumb over the receding mark. That’ll bruise, not today but tomorrow. “Thanks Gareth, you really know how to make a guy feel special,” Phillip says. 

“Hey, I think you’re pretty cool.”

“Sure, I guess. I mean, whatever.”

“You’re supposed to return the compliment,” Gareth reminds him.

Phillip doesn’t answer. He’s thinking, and sometimes that’s a bad thing but mostly it just means he’s going to tear himself apart in tiny increments. Instead he says, “How do you always smell so nice?” Because it’s true; Gareth always smells good, generally. In the back of his ears, his neck, even sometimes at the end of a long day when his sweat has deepened in the places Phillip likes to run the pads of his fingers across. He wears cologne, or at least there’s a hint of it perfuming his skin, a pleasant dewiness that’s hard to mask.

“It’s called hygiene, Phillip. You should try it some time.” Gareth teases gently, clearly amused. He elbows him in the ribs, huffing out a laugh when Phillip pokes him in the stomach where he’s most self-conscious, because he doesn’t have a six pack and hates any form of exercise unless you count walking up the one flight of stairs to his apartment. But Phillip likes that about him, and it’s taken months of constant hemming and hawing for him to get to this point, of confessing the truth to himself: that there are things he likes about Gareth, not including his laugh which is sometimes annoying, a halting donkey guffaw, but other things, like his sense of humor, and his accent, and the shuddering sighs he makes in the mornings when Phillip deigns to stay.

“I’m serious though,” Gareth says a moment later. “You should go visit your dad. He’ll like that. He’ll want to see you.”

Phillip blinks crust off his eyelashes. “I made his life a living hell,” he says after a drawn out pause.

“You do that to people,” Gareth muses. “Sometimes even to the people you love.”

“Maybe so,” Phillip agrees. 

*

Phillip’s dad dies six weeks later. He did the best he could, holding on for as long as he could, the stubborn fucking bastard. But that’s what all the men in his family have in common; they probably got it from him.

This time when Phillip gets the call, he makes the executive decision to show up for the funeral. He misses his mom. He misses his old life. He takes a plane to New York, driving his rental car from JFK to Long Island. It’s a long drive, full of scenic views, like traveling through a rolodex of old memories in sepia. He used to hate this place as a kid, nothing to do, no one to see. All the other Jewish kids hated him; he skipped temple and smoked joints behind the old skating rink. He dated a Catholic.

Nothing much has changed in the last few years, Phillip thinks. Not him: he’s still a slave to old vices. Still a royal fuckup, doing nothing with his life. Some of the architecture has modernized, but he recognizes old haunts: the diner, the video rental store now boarded up, Hebrew school, that’s always interesting.  

He dials the number without even thinking. “It’s me,” he says, while searching vainly for parking. He can see the funeral up the hill, mourners congregated in black, the long line of identical cars flanking the side of the street. 

“I’m booking you a flight to New York. It’s gonna be a long weekend and I need,” Phillip swallows. “I’m gonna need some help.”

Gareth doesn’t speak for a long time. His voice is overlaid with static, cutting in and out. “Sorry— sorry, what was that? I was in the shower. Can you say that again please?”

Phillip laughs. He tries to picture it: Gareth, with a towel wrapped around his skinny hips, his skin wet. Phillip fucked him in the shower once and almost ended up with a slipped disc. 

“Get dressed,” Phillip manages to bite out, nosing his car up behind a minivan. “You’re going to New York. I’m booking you a flight after this call. I’ll send you the address and you should be fine if you take a cab straight from the airport. I’ll pay for everything. And don’t go on the scenic route. In fact, let me talk to the cab driver first, because let me tell you, they’ll scam—”

“Wait,” Gareth interrupts. “New York? I’ve never been to New York.”

“Then consider it a vacation,” Phillip says. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Pack for a very long weekend. We might be sitting shiva.”

Phillip digs through his duffel for his sunglasses. He’s late. He always is. He sprints the rest of the way uphill, vaulting over headstones. _Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit._ There’s his family, their heads bowed in prayer, and that kid from Hebrew school who always hung around trying to touch his sister Wendy’s boobs, Boner. 

He’s a rabbi now. What a joke. And Wendy has had another kid, a baby boy.  

Phillip makes his presence known, lifts his arms as he seizes his mom in a fierce hug. “Mommy!” he says, overdramatic, as usual. She got a boob job. Neat. But she smells the same, like hairspray, like his mom, when she would sit with him indoors while it rained outside and there was nothing else to do but play Scrabble or blackjack. His dad would make affirmative noises meanwhile, and nod at Phillip whenever he made all the right moves. 

Now they’re laying him to rest. Phillip hardly even knew him. He gives Boner a two-fingered salute. Boner rolls his eyes heavenward. 

*

They’re sitting shiva.

“We’re sitting shiva,” his mom says, “It’s what your dad would have wanted.” 

They all groan collectively even though they knew it was coming; dad had always been old-fashioned, a sucker for tradition. He believed in old wives tales, like swallowing sugar to stop hiccups, that curly hair meant curly thoughts. 

They’ll drive each other crazy before the week is over. Phillip still owes Paul some money; he’s been shooting him sidelong glances all morning. And then there’s Judd whose dour mood hangs over all of them like a depressing rain cloud. At least Wendy is in a good enough mood, though Phillip can’t help but get distracted by the toddler attached to her hip.

He twiddles his thumbs. The shiva chairs are uncomfortable, stacked low to the ground. People come by and offer their condolences. Some of them he recognizes from his childhood, but he draws a blank on most. Later in the afternoon, he gets a frantic call from Gareth, speaking a mile a minute. “I think I’m in front of your house!” he says, panicky, and sure enough there he is, a yellow cab is parked directly in front of the driveway and Gareth is popping open the trunk while glancing around and scratching his hip. 

Phillip pockets his phone quickly, jogging from the porch to help him with his carry-on luggage. He looks good, in a black dress shirt and jeans, a dorky little bowtie. And his hair is up and he’s so sweet-looking, Phillip can’t help but grab him by the ass and give him a big old sloppy kiss, in full view of the congregation of mourners. He knows they’re watching. _Let them_ , he thinks. He doesn’t care. 

Gareth sighs into his mouth, moaning in his throat, his arms squished between their tightly pressed bodies. When he pulls back, he’s a little cross-eyed, his lips parted and wet. 

“Hi,” Phillip says, palming his ass in one hand. “What took you so long. Traffic that bad?”

“Low-level anxiety,” Gareth laughs. “ _Ha_.” He squeaks when Phillip squeezes his ass harder. 

“Tell me about it,” Phillip mutters. “I think my brother Paul is going to murder me in my sleep.”

“What,” Gareth says.

Phillip pays the cabbie and slams the passenger door shut, watches as the cab speeds off without him in it. He has a fantasy playing in his head: just him and Gareth hopping into his car and driving off, away from all of this, his family, this house with old sorrows still sitting in locked rooms. “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” he says. “In any case, I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Gareth says sadly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Phillip tells him. He grabs Gareth’s hand and starts walking him up the driveway. It’s a long walk. He can see Wendy, Paul, Judd, and his mom all peering through the blinds and watching them. They’re probably talking about them right now. He shakes his head. 

“Don’t let them intimidate you,” he tells Gareth, watching his face closely for any telltale signs of trepidation. He hates confrontation and large crowds. He hates being scrutinized. “Remember: you’re my guest. And if you run out of places to sit you can always sit in my lap.”

Gareth widens his eyes. “Right. That doesn’t seem very appropriate, does it.”

“Do you want to fuck later?”

“Phillip!” Gareth tugs at his hand. “Jesus. Your dad just died!”

“I’m nervous. And I have all this excess energy!” Phillip reasons. “Come on, just a quickie. Fifteen minutes. I’ll even let you come first.”

Gareth flushes. It’s an attractive shade of red but Phillip is starting to realize that Gareth is a terribly attractive man. He used to think it was the hair, then the body, then the face. Now he’s sure it’s just him. “Sure,” Gareth mumbles, not meeting Phillip’s eyes, his palm starting to sweat. “At least let me put my bags down first and use the bathroom.”

“We can fuck in the bathroom,” Phillip suggests, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

Gareth shoots him a horrified look. His voice high-pitched when he says, “ _Phillip, please._ ” And doesn’t that make Phillip a little hard. 

“I’m joking. Lighten up, Gareth,” Phillip says breezily. “And then smile,” he adds, pushing the front door open. “Here we go.”

*

Phillip ends up fucking him in the bathroom. He’s an animal, a bastard. He’s a lot of things, and one of them is someone who can’t keep his hands to himself whenever Gareth is involved. It’s like he’s a teenager again, in this house, besieged with hormones he doesn’t know what to do with, thinking with his fucking dick.

Gareth clutches at the sink, muffling his moans by biting his lip hard. His breath steams the mirror in front of him. Phillip fucks him with his pants rolled down to his ankles. His belt goes _clink clink_ on the tile. _Clink clink_ with every rough thrust that opens Gareth’s ass up a little more than the last time Phillip’s fucked him without compunction. Phillip slumps against him once he finishes, working his hand up and down Gareth’s dick till he comes as well with a small noise, splattering ropes of it against the expensive porcelain Phillip’s mother spent a fortune on. 

Phillip licks his palm clean, then kisses Gareth with the same tongue. He pulls his dick out when it softens, groaning when Gareth clenches reflexively. Gareth is going to be so sore after. At least they did it with a condom on and don’t have to worry about clean up though. Gareth would hate him if he made an even bigger mess in his ass.

“Your family thinks I’m a freak,” Gareth says, resting his chin on the sink. Phillip brushes the sweaty hair from his face. His hair is getting longer but Phillip doesn’t want him to cut it, all that red hair lost, the best kind of hangman’s noose. He likes having something to pull, to run his fingers through when he’s deep in thought like this. It’s therapeutic.

“I think you’re a freak, too,” Phillip says, stroking the soft skin of Gareth’s neck, making him shiver. “But like, a sex freak.”

Gareth glares at him. “You’d think that, don’t you.”

“It’s a compliment.”

Gareth sighs noisily in reply. Phillip yanks his pants back up and tucks himself back into his boxers. He helps Gareth get sorted, wrapping the condom in a wad of toilet paper before flushing it down the toilet. 

They’ve been gone a while. People will know what they’ve done. They’ll smell it on Gareth, on Phillip. And Phillip gets a little cocky when he’s just had sex, his strides are bigger, his voice brighter. He’s not known for his subtlety. They’ll see it from a mile away, a flashing neon sign above his head. 

Phillip contemplates a cigarette but he’s trying his best to be good, for his own sake and Gareth’s. His mom has tolerated everything until now: coming out as bisexual, borrowing money both of them know he’s never to return, ignoring her calls. He doesn’t want her to kick him out because he’s had sexual intercourse during shiva. 

“Your mum asked me if I was your boyfriend,” Gareth says, once he finishes with his hair, leaving slants of it dangling across his forehead. He looks good like this, messy, his bowtie askew. 

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing,” Gareth says, shrugging. “I just smiled at her. She scares me a little.”

“She scares everyone,” Phillip says.

*

Phillip is set up in his old room. His mom had kept his things: old books and model airplanes, the posters on the walls, furred with gathering dust. The placement of everything is just as he remembers them, down to the dent in the wall he tried desperately to cover with duct tape, once.

He and Gareth squeeze into his old double bed under the slanted ceiling. He’s still craving that cigarette. The whole house is settling in to sleep, quiet now during the late hour though he can hear muffled movement outside in the hall. Phillip puts his hand under Gareth’s shirt, finding the gaps in his ribs and resting his fingers there.

Gareth shivers. He’s so thin. He should take care of himself better. “Don’t pinch my nipple,” Gareth warns, elbowing him. “You always do that when you have your hand up my shirt and it hurts.”

“I thought you like it when I do that,” Phillip wonders aloud.

“Not when we’re not having sex, no,” Gareth says.

They lapse back into silence. Phillip drums his fingers against Gareth’s hip. He’d packed pajamas. Phillip can just reach inside the waistband and rub his dick until it stiffens but they’ve just had sex this afternoon and he knows when Gareth isn’t in the mood to indulge him. The store is closed for the night. This is the after hours. He’ll have to wait till the morning.

“So that’s my family,” Phillip says conversationally. “They’re crazy but I love them, I guess.”

“They’re wonderful,” Gareth says a little too abruptly. “Although I don’t think Paul likes me very much.”

“It’s nothing personal. He doesn’t like me either and we’re related.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

Phillip shrugs. “I borrowed some money from him that I haven’t paid back. That’s part of the reason he’s giving me the side-eye. And then I had the gall to bring you home, you who I haven’t told anyone about, ever. He’s a little shocked, I think. He hates it when the spotlight is on me.”

“Why _did_ you bring me home?” Gareth asks, turning in Phillip’s arms, peering up at him in the dark. He doesn’t blink. His eyes are strangely luminous, catching the light of the street lamp outside. 

Phillip swallows.

“What am I doing here, Phillip?”

The truth is harder to pin down. He can lie, evade the question. He can refuse to answer. He can pretend to get all up in arms, but he doesn’t. His dad is dead. It’s true what they say; death brings clarity. It puts everything into perspective, into an order they typically lose when faced with the fatigue of everyday life. 

“I didn’t want to be alone,” Phillip says because it’s easier this way, and closer to the truth. “And you’re my best friend.”

Gareth studies him, as if trying to read into the sincerity of the statement. Then he blinks and blinks again, breaking eye contact, unspooling himself to stretch and yawn and settle in for sleep, turning his face away so Phillip has a faceful of red hair. One day, Phillip is going to drown in it, he thinks. But it’ll be such a pleasant death. He doesn’t think he’d mind.

“They all saw you kissing me in the driveway,” Gareth says, voice muffled against his arm. “What do I say when they ask about, you know, you and me?” _Our relationship,_ he doesn’t say. But Phillip isn’t stupid; he hears the pinch in Gareth’s voice. He knows what he means. All day Gareth’s been dodging the question like shrapnel, avoiding talking to people as much as he can by hiding away in the bathroom every other hour. Phillip would call him a coward except he’d accompany him now and again, sitting him with on the floor and making fun of his dad’s guests.

“You can say whatever the hell you want,” Phillip says, pushing the hair aside on Gareth’s neck, tracing the bumps of his collarbone. “You can tell them anything.”

“Anything,” Gareth repeats. Disbelief mars his voice, softens the hurt edges of it. Then he laughs, shaking his head. “Really.”

“Sure,” Phillip promises. “Anything at all.”

*

The Altman family is not known for their tact. Wendy is the first one to ask about Gareth. She knows Phillip kisses girls but fucks boys, that he knew this about himself even as early as fifteen, that the reason he dated Jenny Miller back in high school was not because of the blowjobs he often bragged about, but because of her hot college brother. She raised Phillip alongside their mother. There’s nothing that Phillip can hide from her.

“Please tell me you’re not stringing that poor boy along,” she says, the second they have a moment alone in the kitchen. She gives Phillip a meaningful look. 

“I’m not,” Phillip says, loading the dishwasher, slamming the lid shut with more force than necessary. “Believe it or not, I’m not actually an asshole.”

“And he looks so sweet too,” she says, touching his arm, and there’s something in that that Phillip decides not to read into, not right now when he’s in a jovial mood. 

“Just don’t break his heart, Phil,” she says to him. Phillip makes the mistake of glancing across the room where Gareth is helping Linda and his mom tidy up. There’s crap everywhere that guests have left, on the coffee table, behind the curtains, on the sofa and mantle. Gareth giggles at something Phillip’s mom must’ve said while he stacks plates in his arms in a haphazard pile. 

Gareth has a funny laugh: the quiet one where he hunches his shoulders and scrunches his face is the one he’s doing now. He catches Phillip’s eye and smiles, curling his hair behind one ear.

“I’m not an asshole,” Phillip tells Wendy when he feels her bony elbow nudge him in the side, knocking the wind out of him. “I mean, do you think I’m an asshole?”

“I think your heart is in the right place,” she sighs, “But oftentimes it’s in your dick.”

Phillip thinks about that all day, sitting shiva in the crappy chair that makes his knees hurt, and then later on the back porch, smoking a cigarette that he hides from everyone. He knows Gareth will smell it on him later, but Gareth doesn’t really mind, as long as Phillip brushes his teeth before he kisses him and promises to quit smoking again. He’s made the vow about a dozen in the past but there are some things that are hard for him to give up.

Phillip glances up when he hears the screen door bang open. It’s Gareth, in jeans and a too big t-shirt. Phillip entertains the fantasy that Gareth had come here to fuck. They haven’t fucked in twenty-four hours and for some reason this makes him antsy. He decides he likes Gareth in too big t-shirts, ones that he can put his hands under so he can feel Gareth’s soft tits. 

“Phillip,” Gareth says, knocking him out of that particular train of thought rather violently. “Can I sit with you?”

“Come on down,” Phillip beckons, feeling magnanimous. He likes his peace, but there’s something about being in this house again that makes him feel unmoored, like he can’t be alone for too long or he’ll burst out of his skin. Or maybe it’s his dad’s ghost hiding behind every tree, every open door. Phillip misses him. He taught Phillip how to throw a baseball but Phillip never really got the hang of it; what he excelled at, spectacularly, was breaking windows.

Gareth slurps his hot chocolate. When he sets his mug down, his upper lip comes away with a streak of whipped cream. Phillip leans over and licks it off him, delicate licks that turn hungry and morph into a kiss. He cradles the back of Gareth’s head, and Gareth sighs into his mouth, his eyes falling shut. He has the softest mouth Phillip’s ever kissed, and he rubs his thumb over the shape of it until it gives away and Gareth bites down gently on his finger.

“How are you feeling?” Gareth breathes, eyes bright with a film of arousal when Phillip pulls away. Gareth’s leg is hitched over Phillip’s lap, Phillip’s hand under his ass. Funny how things escalate when the two of them are left alone. 

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be feeling?” Phillip says honestly, squeezing his ass before letting his leg go. “Crazy? Paul is unbearable and I hate everyone in this town.”

“Not your ex-girlfriend though,” Gareth says. He looks nervous, swallowing a laugh, wringing his hands and not meeting Phillip’s eye. 

Phill glances at him, huffing. “You saw that?”

Gareth shrugs with one shoulder, grabbing a wad of his hair and chewing the end of it, a nervous tic. “I don’t know. You two seemed pretty friendly.”

“You’re hotter than she is,” Phillip says, rolling his eyes. “And besides, you should know by now that I like you more. I’m not going to cheat on you if that’s what you’re thinking. Do you think I’d do that?”

Gareth stares at him. Then he says, “Are you drunk?” while narrowing his eyes speculatively. Phillip feels a stab of guilt, then of hurt, because of course Gareth thinks that he’s drunk; he’s nice to Gareth only when he wants something, when he lets his guard down in those predawn hours when he’s afraid of being alone with his thoughts.

“I’m not drunk,” Phillip says after a moment. “Or high,” he adds later. 

Gareth rubs at his neck, embarrassed. He leans forward on his knees and the collar of his shirt dips so low that Phillip can see the inside. His chest, his ribs, the soft little points of his nipples. “So you like me, huh,” he says. He sounds surprised, unsure, like he doesn’t know how to make peace with the fact. Phillip doesn’t know how to, either. The admission just slips out of him, like it’s always been there, hiding in plain sight. Like he’s known it for a very long time, only it took his dad dying to make him say it, make him brave.

“We’re not in grade school, Gareth,” Phillip says. 

“But you think I’m hot,” Gareth continues. He’s enjoying this too much. Phillip rolls his eyes again but lets him have this, because he owes it to Gareth to be generous. He flicks him in the back of the ear just to knock him down a peg or two, but Gareth is still grinning and his glee is infectious and Phillip has to stop himself from kissing the smug grin off his face.

“Thanks for being here,” Phillip tells him, bumping their shoulders together instead. Gareth bumps back, gently, still rubbing his ear where Phillip had flicked him hard. “And hanging around.”

“I didn’t have anything to do this weekend,” Gareth says, and he’s being meek now. “And your dad did die, Phillip…” He says meaningfully. He kisses Phillip on the cheek before stroking the spot with his thumb, over and over. 

Phillip smiles at him in commiseration, and they sit leaning back on their palms listening to the sound of evening birds overhead, saying nothing until the light deepens to dusk and Phillip’s mom calls them in for dinner.

Phillip thinks about Wendy, warning him about breaking Gareth’s heart. He doesn’t think he has it in him. Phillip’s had plenty of fuck buddies before who were smarter and funnier and richer and leagues hotter than Gareth but he can’t bear to think of breaking Gareth’s heart. He’s never wanted anyone the way he wants him, and it’s a mystery of human chemistry; some people as far as the senses are concerned just feel like home.   

Phillip grabs him by the hand, hoisting him up to his feet. He doesn’t let go until they’re inside the house, and even then he holds Gareth’s hand discreetly under the table, all throughout the main course.

He wonders when this became the easy part.

*

Gareth leaves for work two days later. He has an important presentation. He can’t miss it even when Phillip bribes him to stay with sex and promises to take him to Cooper’s Beach for ice cream, a tan, and the complete tourist’s experience. Phillip drives him to the airport at five in the morning, past rows of sleepy houses and still-empty streets, coffee the only thing keeping him awake at the wheel. Gareth has his face pressed against the window as he hums along to the radio. Phillip touches his knee. He looks up and smiles sleepily. Phillip had watched him pack his clothes this morning, which is to say he watched Gareth stuff everything into a duffel bag with no discernible order whatsoever, hopping around in panic after sleeping through his alarm.

“Don’t miss me too much,” Phillip says before they part, just as he’s unloading the trunk. “I’ll be back by the end of the week before you know it. The hubbub should die down by then. And then… I don’t know. Hopefully I will have survived it.”

Gareth looks at him funny, cocking his hip to one side, one hand stuffed in his pocket. They’d fucked last night, quiet, making the bed rock on its old creaky legs, Gareth begging Phillip to come in him and fill him up. “You know, you’re being very nice to me right now,” he says, too coherent for his own good even with a hickey mottling the side of his neck.

“Is it weird?”

“It’s very weird,” Gareth affirms. They stand awkwardly on the sidewalk. Phillip claps him in a one-armed hug, and then kisses him full on the mouth, squeezing his hip. Then he kisses him again because he’d wanted to this morning only Gareth had turned his face away to avoid morning breath. 

“Good luck with that presentation,” Phillip says, lifting his hand up in a wave. He starts walking backwards, unfolding his sunglasses and snapping them on. “I mean it.”

“Thanks,” Gareth laughs. “Come home soon all right? I mean—” he fumbles.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Phillip says, sparing him the embarrassment, saving himself from it too. “I’ll call you. Take care of yourself.” Then he hops into the car and drives off. He pulls the windows down. The early morning sun is warm and solid on his face when he angles his face to the sky. He wants to sleep. He doesn’t know why. He can’t wait till the week is over, till he’s home again in his own apartment or Gareth’s excuse for an apartment, eating food Gareth made straight from the pan.

He taps his hands on the steering wheel. 

Bob Dylan is on the radio, singing about how times are a-changin’. He’s never been more right.

*

“I want you on all fours on the bed ready for me when I get there,” is the first thing Phillip says to Gareth as soon as his plane touches down. He pockets his phone without waiting for a reply, flags a cab to his apartment where he knows Gareth has been all week. He has spare key that Phillip lent him months and months ago in case of emergencies like sudden death or Phillip running out of food though mostly the key is for whenever Phillip is too lazy to drive over to his place. Now he thanks himself for this foresight. He’s been raring to go home.

Gareth is in the kitchen, frowning and crouched in front of the oven when Phillip arrives, cranky from the plane ride. Not on all fours, not even naked, like Phillip has been anticipating, not writhing or needy or begging for Phillip’s affection. But he’s wearing his hair up, which frankly still has the power to drive Phillip a little crazy, a minor concession.

“Oh, you’re here. I didn’t hear you come in. Welcome back,” Gareth says and he throws his apron aside and starts pouring Phillip a glass of water.

Phillip starts taking off his clothes beginning with his jacket, walking to the bedroom and hoping Gareth will follow. He kneels on the bed, throws himself on the covers with a groan. It’s still dented from this morning, and the sheets smell like Gareth, a warm skin smell. A curl of red hair sits on one of the pillows, looped like a question mark. 

Phillip is asleep within minutes and when he comes to, the sun has gone outside. He hears Gareth watching something in the living room and when he goes to check, Gareth is seated on the sofa with his legs folded underneath him, slurping spaghetti bolognese from a bowl. Hair down, because it’s that time of day. 

When he senses Phillip watching him, Gareth wipes his mouth against the sleeve of his shirt and ducks his head in embarrassment. “Hi,” he says. “You were asleep a while.”

It feels like the understatement of the century. Phillip’s never slept that long before even when he’d black out after an all night binge, the sleep of the road weary. 

Gareth lifts the bowl in offering. “Hungry?” 

Phillip shrugs. Then he sits with him and lets Gareth feed him the rest of the bolognese. 

This new facet of his life is strange not because it happened entirely by accident but because if Phillip had a choice he wouldn’t change a thing. He looks at Gareth, and the curious shape he has carved into his life without ever trying. His face is lit by the intermittent glow of the television screen, his eyes changing color when he blinks, like a cat’s.

Phillip pulls him up to his feet. He turns the television off with the remote and the room is pitch black. Once, Phillip used to be afraid of the dark. But the danger was never in what he couldn’t see, it’s always existed inside himself.

They stumble to the bedroom, kissing, kissing, Phillip walking to the bed and tumbling backwards. He tugs Gareth along with him, an unstoppable freefall, except this time he surrenders to it with his eyes open. 

Afterwards, naked from the waist down, they lie there panting up the ceiling, covered in sweat, in lube, and in come. So much come that Phillip has to laugh. Gareth is squirming, spread-eagled like a starfish, debauched and compliant with his hole all sore and gaping. Phillip made him come three times until he was dumb with it and drooling, a creature ruled by base instinct and lust. 

Phillip likes sex, that much is true. He enjoys the way it makes him feel after and during but he also enjoys the comfortable silence that follows in the aftermath, that only ever happens when you’re with a certain person.

“So do you want to do this or what,” Phillip asks, casual, though the question is anything but. He waits for some sort of response and when none seems to be forthcoming, rolls onto his side and faces away from him.

Gareth shifts next to him, touching him gingerly on the shoulder. “Do what?” he asks tentatively. 

“ _Date_ ,” Phillip says. “Or whatever.” He flaps his hand around, embarrassed. Look at him, embarrassed. Phillip Altman, who’s always been so cocky, who owns a persuasive tongue. Times are changing. 

“Huh,” says Gareth into the ensuing silence. “I thought maybe we already were.”

Phillip turns to look at him. Misinterpreting intentions happens to everyone at some point which is why it takes him a moment to absorb what he just heard. “Since when?”

Gareth shrugs. “A while.” Phillip doesn’t ask him to quantify that into a recognizable number, decides to leave it for another day. Maybe Gareth will never tell him, maybe he’ll never know. Maybe he’s known all along and has simply been too scared to acknowledge it. He strokes the soft skin of Gareth’s thigh thoughtfully where the hair is sparse and he has a freckle in the shape of a teardrop. It’s funny, how well he knows Gareth’s body even in the dark. 

“I’m kind of an asshole,” Phillip says, “I don’t know why you’ll want me but I’ll be careful with you if you let me. From now on.”

“Okay,” says Gareth. 

Phillip stares, at Gareth who yawns and circles Phillip’s arm around his waist, settling in for the night. At Gareth who just takes Phillip baring out his soul to him at face value. At Gareth whose precise shape fills all the empty spaces in Phillip’s bed. “Okay?” Phillip echoes, in disbelief and confusion. 

“Yeah,” Gareth says, yawning again, stretching. “Okay.”

Then he starts to snore, his head drooping to the side, limp. 

“Okay,” Phillip breathes.

* 

A year after Phillip’s dad dies, his mom rounds them up for dinner. Phillip has half the mind to flake out, in true Phillip fashion, but he actually ends up going, dragging Gareth along for the ride when his mother insists that he bring him too. She calls him Phillip’s sweet boy and Phillip wonders when that has happened. He used to be _her_ sweet boy. But it’s not like he doesn’t agree: Gareth is indeed a sweet boy, sweetest when his face is the first thing Phillip sees every morning, a marvel he still has trouble trying to believe is real.

As usual, Paul brings up the store over dinner, a point of contention because everyone — actually only Paul — wants a piece. “Dad would have wanted me to run it,” Paul says, and Wendy throws her hands up in exasperation as everyone starts yelling. Phillip’s mom sighs, rolling her eyes while Judd just raises his eyebrows at Phillip, waiting for him to say something. 

In the last year since they’d seen each other, Judd has had to juggle a divorce, a kid, and a new job in a new city. Meanwhile, Phillip has moved out of his apartment and he’s doing the respectable thing by paying Gareth his share of the rent while he looks for somewhere halfway decent to live with central heating that’s within walking distance of the Metro. 

He’s had to sell his car; money is a funny fickle thing. At least he still has his inheritance, which will allow him to sit comfortably on his thumbs for a certain amount of time before he has to look for a job with actual benefits.

Phillip slips out after dessert when the worst of it has passed, smoking his first cigarette in a long while, out on the back porch where the moon is bright enough that it gilds the cherry trees. Gareth follows him outside, taking him by surprise when he hugs him by the waist and props his chin on Phillip’s shoulder. 

“Are you all right?” he asks, because he’s known Phillip long enough to sense when he’s mildly distressed.

“Let’s go somewhere,” Phillip says. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

Phillip liked girls almost as much as he liked boys, but growing he didn’t realize how different it made him until Joshua Rubenstein called him a fag during recess. After class, Phillip broke two of Joshua’s front teeth. Their rabbi had to mediate so that the Rubensteins wouldn’t press charges and for a whole year after, Phillip carried those bloody teeth in his back pocket. No special reason, though it did make him feel invincible, like nothing could ever hurt him, anymore, after. 

Phillip used to bring boys home and kiss them in the basement behind the broken television, but if he really liked them he took them to the skating rink.

“Wanna see a cool trick?” he asks Gareth, jerking his head towards the direction of the rink. There’s no one else around; the last of the stragglers have all trickled out, kids with their parents and young couples out on a date.

Gareth looks at him skeptically. “Uh,” he says eloquently. “I didn’t know you could skate.”

Phillip doesn’t, not really; he hasn’t skated in years so he skids on the ice and lands flat on his ass in the middle of a spin. Penny Moore, Judd’s high school sweetheart, had taught him that trick in high school though she executed it with a lot more flair and a little less falling. She was the love of Judd’s life and Judd is in love with her still even after all these years, after an unsuccessful marriage and then a kid. 

Phillip’s never really had anything like that before; he had flings and convenient friendships and kissed boys who never told. But here’s what he’s starting to learn: that people are mutable; that they can change. That he wants so badly to be good now that he has Gareth by his side to pull him back from the dark places his mind will go. 

Gareth glides across the ice before wobbling over to kneel next to him. His hands cup Phillip’s face and he blinks down at Phillip, his under chin showing. “Are you all right?” He’s still laughing but his hands are warm.

Phillip swats at him halfheartedly.“I forgot how much this sucks,” he grumbles. “Jesus, I think I broke my hip.” He flexes his left leg. Gareth laughs harder. 

“I was thinking,” Phillip says, when the laughter has died and the lights around them have started to close, a polite reminder that they’re overstaying their welcome. “Maybe there’s something of a businessman in me.”

“You’re not selling your share of the store?” Gareth asks. He lifts his head, curious.

“I guess not,” Phillip says. “I mean half of it is because I want to piss Paul off which is always fun. But the other half is genuine interest. I think I can make a difference.”

“Huh,” says Gareth. “So you’re going to move back here to run the store with him.” 

It’s not a question. He’s looking at Phillip, not blinking or saying anything or frowning. Just looking.

“You should do it,” Gareth says eventually, “You’re good at talkingpeople into things. You could do marketing.”

_But I’ll be away from you,_ Phillip doesn’t say and since when has the thought terrified him? These are strange times indeed.

“I’m still thinking about it,” he says. And then, “You really think I could do it?” 

“Of course I do,” Gareth says, and he sounds surprised that Phillip has even asked, leaning his head against Phillip’s shoulder, all that red hair. “I believe you can do anything, Phillip.”

*

Phillip goes out for a run. He sneaks out of bed at four in the morning. It’s early and the entire neighborhood is still asleep. He cuts through the park, passing places he knows from memory, and doesn’t stop running until his legs burn from exertion and his lungs start to ache. When he slips back into the room, Gareth is already wake, lifting his head from the tumult of pillows as he glances up at Phillip toeing off his shoes by the door.

“Where’ve you been?” Gareth asks sleepily. He’s missing a shirt. It’s somewhere in this room, tossed haphazardly about some time in the night when Phillip had yanked it off him.

“Around,” Phillip says, kicking off his other shoe. He kneels on the bed and Gareth opens his arms to receive him, making a face at the sheen of sweat covering his skin, his sharp smell. Gareth’s warm from sleep and sweetly compliant, gasping dreamily when Phillip pins him onto his back and covers his body with his own. Phillip is hard in his shorts instantly and he can feel Gareth’s answering arousal throbbing through the thin cotton of his pajamas as Phillip flexes on top of him.

“Let’s fuck,” Phillip says, breathing the words right into Gareth’s mouth, nipping the skin. “Spread your legs.” 

Gareth whines, a half-complaint. Sore probably, still, from last night. “We just fucked. Are you serious?”

“Don’t you want to?”

Gareth does. He always does, and Phillip slides into him like coming home, where it feels safe and familiar, and there’s no hiding anything from each other. He fucks Gareth in measured strokes, like there’s no world outside the bedroom walls, and they have all the time in the world, kissing to muffle every sigh, every groan.

Phillip tightens his grip on Gareth’s wrists. Gareth’s mouth falls open briefly, his eyes fluttering shut as he digs his heels, his whole body open in surrender. And Phillip wants this, he realizes, in the split-second it takes to drive himself deeper, he wants this all the time, every part of him greedy for anything Gareth is willing to give. 

When they finish, Gareth smells like him, like his sweat and his come. He doesn’t let Phillip go, breathing hard underneath Phillip and trying to reel himself back in from the precipice, eyes closed. Phillip kisses his eyelids before pulling out with a grunt. Come slops out of Gareth’s ass; they’ve made a mess — _again_ — of the bed. 

“That’ll be the last time I’m ever going to let you fuck me today,” Gather mutters, though a teasing lilt has crept into his voice and he probably doesn’t mean it. 

“Are you sure,” Phillip says, “You said that last time and you still let me fuck you.”

“I hate you,” Gareth laughs.

“No, you don’t,” Phillip reminds him, and a feeling rushes through him like a wave crashing. He feels a dull buzz at the back of his head, bells going _ping ping ping ping_ in warning. “I know you don’t.”

Gareth swallows. He studies Phillip, as if waiting for a response. “I don’t,” he affirms. 

“I don’t either,” Phillip says, “Hate you, I mean. Kind of the opposite, though it took me a long time to figure it out. I didn’t know, not for a while. But now, now I do. Sorry for the runaround.”

“Right,” Gareth says, and he’s red now, in the face, and it’s all the way in his neck and the back of his ears. Phillip is in the same boat. He can feel his chest constricting, but it’s a good kind of ache, like the first breath after drowning. Or like drinking cold water after being starved for weeks. First time he’s facing this head on, and he’s fucking terrified for his life but he’s not about to back down. He used to be a coward, running at the first sign of smoke with his tail between his legs. Now there’s nowhere to hide; to go forward he must walk through fire.

“I ran into your mum last night,” Gareth says, after Phillip has wrapped himself around him like a vice.

“Yeah?” 

“She said we should keep it down,” Gareth says, “Because the noise is starting to scare the children.” He sounds completely mortified. 

Phillip ducks his head and smiles into Gareth’s hair. “Maybe we _are_ overdoing it a little,” he realizes. “How do you feel about being gagged?”

Gareth kicks him gently under the covers. They both need a shower; they both stink of sex. But Phillip doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to leave; he wants to stay in this room forever, in this bed, locked in Gareth’s fierce embrace. It’s funny, the steps that it took to get here. The hardest part is over; the rest is just a question of whether Phillip will want to keep doing this, day in, day out. 

Gareth breaks into a yawn. Phillip loves him. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life, looking at him now dozing with his mouth half open to soft snores and his hair lank and unwashed. He loves him and it’s the craziest thing. 

Later, he’ll talk to Paul about the store, will apologize to his mom and his sister for traumatizing her children with their constant ruckus. Even later he’ll drive Gareth up to Cooper Beach for surf and sun and hotdogs and he’ll hold his hand while they make fun of all the tourists. 

For now there’s this: their bodies entwined like spoons, like commas. 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

“Listen,” Phillip says, surrounded by boxes and boxes of his dad’s old things in the basement where the two of them have been demoted. “It’s not as bad as it seems. The fold-out’s kind of comfortable, and I say that from experience.”

Gareth sneezes, once. “Your mother walked in on us having sex,” he says. “I don’t think I can look her in the face ever again.”

“But she didn’t see your naughty parts,” Phillip argues. “And she’s already seen me naked more times in her life than either of us can keep count.”

Then Gareth walks straight into a wreath of cobwebs, which is typical. “Shite! Argh! Help! Phillip!”

“I used to bring guys down here, back in high school,” Phillip says conversationally, helping Gareth pick out the cobwebs from his hair, laughing. “For a good time, you know?” He grins meaningfully but Gareth just tilts his head to one side in question, brushing a spider off his shoulder.  

“I’m not even sure what that means,” Gareth says because of course he doesn’t. 

“Step behind the broken TV,” Phillip instructs. “Then I’ll show you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  


End file.
